AND ANSW 



1 5,000,00 
HILDREN 




\ ">. 




Class TX Oi. 
Book ,M I 4 - 



Copyright N°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



VITAL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 

CONCERNING 

15,000,000 PHYSICALLY 
DEFECTIVE CHILDREN 



By ALFRED W. tycCANN 

MEMBER VIGILANCE COMMITTEE 

ASSOCIATED ADVERTISING CLUBS 

OF AMERICA 



COPYRIGHT, 1913 

F M BARTON • PUBLISHER 
CAXTON BLDG CLEVELAND 



A347766 
flUtk / 



IS YOUR CHILD ONE OF 

15,000,000 PHYSICALLY DEFECTIVE 

CHILDREN IN THE UNITED 

STATES? 



z5o,ooo children die each year. 
5,000,000 children are anaemic or tuber^ 

culous. 
6,000,000 children have adenoids or en> 

larged tonsils. 
10,000,000 children have bad teeth. 



At this rate the nation will become bank/ 
rupt physically in one or two generations. 



If you wish to join hands in this fight for 
pure food and healthy children, send for 
post cards for distribution or mailing. 



TX **\ 



WHAT AM I? 

I am a being composed of body and soul. 
WHAT IS MY BODY? 

My body is the instrument through which my 
soul expresses itself. It is formed of external mem- 
bers and internal organs, all of which work in order 
and agreement with each other under the command 
of an unseen general when I am in that state or 
condition of life called health. 
WHO OR WHAT IS THAT UNSEEN GEN- 
ERAL? 

That unseen general is the wonderful law of 
nature which always operates for my good in a 
fixed manner, unless interfered with by something 
from the outside which accident, ignorance or ill- 
will puts in its way. 

WHAT IS THAT STATE OR CONDITION 
OF LIFE CALLED HEALTH? 

Health is the product of the life that is in me. 
Ash is the end-product of combustion or fire. It is 
the thing that we deal with after the processes of 
burning have been completed. It is the end of the 
fire and the last product of the fire, and so we call 
it an end-product. In the same manner my life- 
processes produce an end-product. When all my 
organs, spleen, heart, liver, lungs, stomach, kidney, 
skin, etc., are working in harmony with each other 
and each is doing its exact duty in obedience to the 
commands of that unseen general, the product of 
my life procession is health. 



WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ONE OF MY 
ORGANS BECOMES LAZY OR CRIP- 
PLED, OR IS INTERFERED WITH BY 
OVER-WORK OR EXCESS OR ABUSE 
OR BAD NOURISHMENT OR STARVA- 
TION? 
Another kind of end-product is produced under 
such conditions. We can name it disease or dis- 
order. It is a bad end-product, and nature abhors 
it and wants it changed so that the good end- 
product which we call health may take its place. 
HOW DO WE KNOW THAT NATURE AB- 
HORS IT? 
Because nature serves warning upon us in the 
form of a sign that we may know that something 
is wrong and thus use the intelligence which God 
has given us to remove or change the bad condi- 
tions that cause the disorder. 

WHAT ARE SOME OF THOSE SIGNS BY 
WHICH NATURE TELLS US THAT 
SOMETHING IS WRONG? 
Pain, loss of feeling or sensation, unnatural sleep, 
or sleep that comes over us when we should be 
awake and at our work or our play; loss of appetite 
or disgust at the sight of food, loss of strength, the 
"blues" or depressed spirits, loss of courage, un- 
easiness. In short, anything that makes us feel out 
of sorts is a sign that one or more of our organs is 
not doing its proper share in keeping us well. 
HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THIS UNSEEN 
GENERAL, OR FIXED LAW OF NATURE, 
ALWAYS OPERATES IN THE SAME 
WAY? 



Because no matter where we go, whether it be to 
China or Greenland, to the United States or to the 
smallest island of the most distant ocean, we find 
that man's body is always composed of the same 
elements and these same elements are always built 
up or organized in the same way, and any interfer- 
ence with the number or nature of these elements 
always results in disease. 

HOW MANY OF THESE FIXED ELEMENTS 
ARE FOUND IN MAN'S BODY? 
About sixteen. 

WHAT ARE THEY? 
Hydrogen, 
Nitrogen, 
Oxygen, 
Carbon, 
Iron, 
Calcium, 
Phosphorus, 
Sodium, 
Potassium, 
Magnesium, 
Silica, 
Sulphur, 
Manganese, 
Chlorine, 
Fluorine, 
Iodine. 

WHERE DO THESE ELEMENTS COME 
FROM? 
From the earth. 



IS THEN THE PHRASE, "DUST THOU ART 
AND UNTO DUST THOU SHALT RE- 
TURN" QUITE TRUE? 
Wonderfully true! 
BUT HOW IS IT THAT THESE SIXTEEN 
ELEMENTS CAN POSSIBLY FORM THE 
BODY OF A MAN? 
Because these elements are organized and com- 
pounded by the Creator in the most mysterious but 
orderly manner, and they unite with each other to 
form the combination of bones, tissues, and blood 
which we know as the human body. 
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ORGANIZING OR 
COMPOUNDING THESE SIXTEEN ELE- 
MENTS? 
To make this clear, let us take something which 
we can grasp and from it gather an idea of God's 
operations in planning and constructing the human 
body. Suppose we take the twenty-six letters of 
the alphabet, and call them elements like the six- 
teen elements of which we are composed, iron, 
phosphorus, calcium, potassium, etc. 

A Shakespeare with his wonderful ability to 
imagine, and his wonderful knowledge of men, takes 
words made up of those twenty-six simple elements, 
or letters of the alphabet, compounds or organizes 
them into phrases. He then groups or organizes 
them into sentences ; the sentences into paragraphs. 
The paragraphs are further organized into scenes, 
the scenes into acts. We marvel at his genius and 
power in combining and balancing the parts, or 
organizing them into the body of singular beauty 
and meaning called the play of Hamlet. Of the 

10 



twenty-six letters employed by Shakespeare in or- 
ganizing his play, five of them are used oftener than 
the others, and at least one of the five is found in 
every word. These are the vowels a-e-i-o-u. In 
somewhat similar manner the Creator has used four 
of the sixteen elements of which the human body 
is organized more often than the others. These four 
elements are found in the air and water and are 
called oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon. Like 
the vowels in words these four elements are found 
distributed through all parts of the human body. 
As the vowels are grouped with some of the other 
letters of the alphabet to form words, so these four 
elements have to be organized with the other twelve 
elements in order that we may have a perfect human 
body, or what is called an organic compound. 
WHAT ARE THOSE OTHER TWELVE ELE- 
MENTS CALLED? 

The minerals of the body. 
ARE THE MINERALS THEN IMPORTANT? 

If we remove any one of them from the body, or 
if we interfere with the power of the body to find 
any one of them, or if we change the nature of any 
one of them by treating it with some foreign ele- 
ment (poison) the body sickens and dies! 
WHERE THEN DOES THE BODY FIND 
THESE TWELVE MINERAL ELEMENTS? 

Only in food. 
IS FOOD THEN A MORE IMPORTANT 
THING THAN IT IS USUALLY CONSID- 
ERED? 

Food is so important that it may be called the 
foundation of all human happiness. Food of the 

11 



proper kind underlies all art, all science, all litera- 
ture, all progress. In proportion as man through 
gluttony, wilful ignorance or stupid indifference, 
ignores the natural (one might almost say the 
divine) relationship existing between proper food 
and normal life, he lessens or destroys the faculties 
of body and mind through which the soul expresses 
its aspirations and desires. Man's body, through 
improper habits of eating and drinking, can become 
so disorganized and so out of tune with the natural 
law that from its disorderly operations every crime, 
including murder, may spring. Witness the crim- 
inal acts of the drunkard! 

IS IT THEN POSSIBLE THAT NATURE SO 
ABHORS ANY TRIFLING WITH HER 
BENEFICENT LAWS THAT SHE DELIB- 
ERATELY PUNISHES AND SERVES 
WARNING ON EVERY OFFENSE IN THE 
FORM OF PAIN? 
Undoubtedly this is just what nature does. If 
we introduce discord into the divine harmonies of 
the human body, we destroy or impair its functions, 
outraging the work of the Creator who made that 
wonderful body. We have to deal with evil in the 
shape of sickness and pain, when by our own acts 
of omission or commission we abuse the marvelous 
machine of the human body by subjecting it to con- 
ditions contrary to the laws of nature, which are 
the laws of God. 

Sickness and pain are not evils as people think, 
but insistent voices of warning crying to us to heed 
our ways. Pain is the conscience of the body, and 
sickness is the balance indicator whereby we may 

12 



determine how much short we come of reaching the 
standard of health. 

DOES ALL FOOD CONTAIN THE SIXTEEN 
ELEMENTS REQUIRED BY THE BODY? 

No! 
WHY IS THIS SO? 

Chiefly because from unnatural demands for so- 
called refinement in the appearance or flavor of 
food, man changes the nature of many of those 
compounds or removes the elements partly or en- 
tirely from the food which nature gives him. 

THEN EVERYTHING THAT MAN EATS IS 
NOT FOOD? 

Food is not what man eats but what he digests. 
Food is those combinations of mineral salts with 
hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon, which give 
to man in assimilable form the elements which form 
his white and red blood corpuscles, his body-juices, 
(saliva, gastric and pancreatic solvents, bile, lymph, 
serum, enzymes, ferments, etc.), his bones, tissues, 
muscles, etc., and which keep these constantly 
changing substances in daily repair, and supply 
heat and energy. 

Food of the proper kind containing these mineral 
salts enables him to elaborate anti-bodies and to 
resist the invasion of disease. 

It also carries on the life processes by which he 
lives; the processes of assimilation, and of equal 
importance, the processes of elimination. Through 
the latter he discards the poisonous end-products of 
the living fires that burn within him. Constant 
chemical changes are carried on by the action of the 

13 



mineral salts. Without the vitalizing influence of 
these he dies. 

HAS SCIENCE DESCRIBED FOOD COR- 
RECTLY? 

Science has divided food into "carbohydrates," 
"proteins" and "fat," dismissing as unimportant the 
division called "ash" under which all the mineral 
salts are found. This mistake has allowed to grow 
up unchallenged many commercial practices, where- 
by in an attempt to gain some advantage over a 
competitor, natural foods have been denatured, im- 
poverished, debased, demineralized, "refined." 
NAME A FEW SUCH PRACTICES. 

The "refining" of the juice of the sugar cane, 
whereby its invaluable tissue salts or mineral salts 
are removed. 

The "pearling" of barley, which results in the 
removal of three-fourths of its vitalizing minerals, 
to improve its appearance. 

The "polishing" of rice, for the same reason and 
with the same results. 

The degerminating and debasing of corn in the 
manufacture of corn meal, corn starch and glucose 
with the same resultant loss of the most indispen- 
sable qualities. 

The treatment of oats, whereby through steaming 
and bleaching a great part of the soluble salts is 
lost or changed. 

The milling of white flour, which for the great 
American bread eaters, the children of the poor, is 
the sign and symbol of decay and death. In the 
screening and bolting process, whereby the bran, 
shorts, tailings, coarse middlings, fine middlings, and 

14 



clear flour are removed, the wheat-berry in which 
nature has gathered up for man all of the sixteen 
food elements required by him particularly during 
the formative or growing period of his life, is robbed 
of eight of these food elements. Then man foolishly 
thinks that his body with the remaining eight can 
do the same work as if it were supplied with the 
sixteen. The child fed on white bread is first of all 
constipated, and then he suffers the loss of the iron 
and manganese necessary for his blood, the potas- 
sium for his tissues, the calcium and phosphorus for 
his bones and teeth, and he also loses the combina- 
tion of these elements with the organic chlorine, 
silica and sodium which enter into the formation of 
many of the acid and alkaline body-juices. 

Defective teeth and vision, lusterless eyes, pale 
cheeks, bloodless lips, underdeveloped limbs, low 
resistance to disease, physiological .discord follow 
in the wake of a white flour, or white bread, cake, 
pie, cracker and syrup diet. 

BUT WHEN WE EAT THE BRAN OR SI- 
LICIOUS MATTER OF THE WHEAT- 
BERRY DO WE NOT EAT WHAT, AS 
HAS BEEN SAID BY THE FLOUR- 
MILLERS, IS PRACTICALLY GROUND 
GLASS? 
We no more eat ground glass in eating the bran 
or silica of the wheat-berry than we eat horseshoes 
in eating its iron, or match-heads in eating its phos- 
phorus, or white-wash in eating its calcium, or foot- 
powder in eating its magnesium, or volcanic fires 
in eating its sulphur, or the enamel of teeth and the 
whites of eye-balls in eating its fluorine. 

15 



BUT WHY SHOULD WE EAT THE BRAN? 

First, because when ground with the whole wheat 
meal, it assists digestion by surrendering to the 
body the precious mineral solubles which it con- 
tains, and second, because it affords a natural, 
gentle and unfailing stimulation to the peristaltic 
action of the bowels, thereby promoting and assist- 
ing perfect elimination without which many grave 
disorders are set up to curse the children of men 
and particularly the mothers of the children of men. 
It is not the bran itself which stimulates this action 
but the mineral substances contained in the bran. 
If these mineral substances are extracted from the 
bran, it will not excite peristaltic action. 

WHAT IS THE PERISTALTIC ACTION OF 
. THE BOWELS? 

The peristaltic action of the bowels is a rhythm- 
ical wave-like contraction and expansion of the 
muscle-layers of the intestines which gently but 
progressively carry the food in its various stages of 
digestion along its course through the body. As the 
food is carried from one zone to another it under- 
goes remarkable changes as the result of the action 
of the acid and alkaline digestives of the body, and 
the decomposing, or splitting-up, action of the var- 
ious ferments and enzymes which attack it and 
break-up its complex structure into simpler forms 
which can be seized by the exceedingly delicate 
machinery of assimilation. In this changed state 
it is appropriated by the body and thus entering 
the blood stream is carried along to do its wonder- 
ful work of keeping the body alive and well. 

16 



IS THIS PROCESS IMPORTANT? 

Through faulty food, too concentrated in form or 
lacking in necessary bulk or fibre, or robbed of the 
basic elements from which the chemical juices of 
the body are formed, this peristaltic action becomes 
sluggish or enfeebled, and constipation and conges- 
tion follow. This congestion passes over into other 
organs, in the case of women to the ovaries. On a 
diet consisting largely of white bread the race un- 
born is handicapped and enfeebled before coming 
into the world. 

WHAT CAUSES WRINKLES OR PREMA- 
TURE AGE? 

By this congestion the ability of the body to seize 
upon the food elements which it needs, is impaired 
and the poisonous end-products of intestinal decom- 
position are absorbed into the blood-stream instead 
of being eliminated, and thus the skin, kidneys and 
lungs are taxed beyond their natural functions in a 
violent effort of nature to purify and keep normal 
the blood stream. In imposing these unnatural 
burdens upon the skin we transform its millions of 
pores into a vast sewer system, thereby destroying 
its elasticity and vigor and robbing it of its fresh- 
ness and brightness of appearance. In this manner 
the bloom of youth is lost and the skin, old before 
its time, sags, wrinkles and hardens into the first 
sign-post of age. Cosmetics applied from the out- 
side will never act as a substitute for normal func- 
tioning within. Beauty, is skin deep and no deeper, 
but the health which underlies that skin-depth is as 
deep as the center-most organ of the body. 

17 



WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF MANY SURGICAL 
OPERATIONS? 

This derangement of function caused by improper 
food gradually but surely spreads to the other 
organs and where nature's margin of safety has 
been overlapped by unnatural activities there is 
rebellion in the form of some acute disease. Unless 
the unnatural cause at this stage is corrected, 
chronic disease follows and the body is burdened to 
a degree that sometimes makes living intolerable. 
Food-follies have been indirectly responsible for 
more suicides than all other evils combined and is 
the cause of 75 per cent of surgical operations. 

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS THAT 
KEEP PHYSICIANS BUSY? 

Cocktails, 

Gin-fizzes, 

Gin-rickies, 

Whiskey, 

Brandy, 

Sulphur-bleached wines, 

Alum-hardened pickles, 

Sulphur-bleached molasses, 

Sulphur-bleached apricots, peaches, pears, apples, 

Copper-colored peas, spinach, stringless beans, 

Canned pumpkin, asparagus, cranberries and all 
other canned foods containing the irritant salts of 
tin. 

Fried eggs and liver, 

Maraschino cherries, 

Lard-logged pastry, 

18 



Chemically preserved condiments, catsup, jams, 
soft drinks, mince meats, 

Artificially colored foods of every kind and the 
hundred "foodless-foods" which commercial inge- 
nuity has attractively prepared behind fancy labels. 
IS WHITE FLOUR BREAD MORE DIGEST- 
IBLE THAN WHOLE-WHEAT BREAD? 

White bread undoubtedly digests in less time 
than whole-wheat bread, but water requires less 
time for absorption than white bread and on such 
lines of reasoning water should be preferable to 
bread of any kind. It can be set down as a fixed 
law of nature that the time required in the diges- 
tion of any natural food is not a factor to be reck- 
oned with. Not time but thoroughness and effic- 
iency must be the standard of measurement. 

The whole wheat gives to the body the elements 
demanded by the body. It has more to give and it 
gives in accordance with nature's law. That nature 
requires more time in the process is as it should be. 

White flour does not give what has been taken 
from it. White bread and water will not sustain 
life. Whole wheat bread and water will sustain life. 
Time is an idle objection when by granting the 
objection and acting upon it we put an end to time 
as far as the body is concerned. 
IF IT IS LAUDABLE TO DENATURE OUR 
BREAD IN THE BREAD STAGE OF OUR 
DIET, SHOULD IT NOT ALSO BE LAUD- 
ABLE TO DENATURE OUR MILK IN 
THE MILK STAGE OF OUR DIET? 
The mother's milk contains the sixteen elements 
needed by the growing babe, and the thought of 

19 



changing the nature of that food by removing one 
or eight of its natural elements before permitting 
the babe to consume it is revolting. If mother's 
food is normal the babe will receive normal milk. 
If her food is lacking in any of the elements de- 
manded by the milk, her own body is consumed in 
nature's effort to produce a perfect milk for the 
growing infant. This consumption of bone, blood 
and tissue continues to the point where the mother, 
like the wrongly fed cow, becomes afflicted with 
tuberculosis. Her tissues have been so robbed of 
their vitalizing and protecting elements that they 
lose resistance and become a fertile field for the de- 
velopment of the tubercle bacilli. 

Cows fed on brewer's grain (demineralized and 
denatured) and the artificial commercial foods with 
which the dairyman has sought to produce cheap 
milk, succumb in large numbers to tuberculosis. 
Cows fed on natural or undenatured food, under the 
auspices of county medical societies for the produc- 
tion of "certified-milk," remain, like the naturally 
fed horse, immune to tuberculosis. 
WHAT IS THE EXACT QUANTITY IN 
TERMS OF GRAMS OF PHOSPHORUS, 
IRON, CALCIUM, POTASSIUM, SILICA, 
CHLORINE, SODIUM, SULPHUR, ETC., 
WHICH WE SHOULD CONSUME EVERY 
DAY? 
No chemist can ever tell us that. Nature has 
cunningly and skillfully arranged the schedule. 
Each natural food contains the right proportions of 
those chemical elements necessary to see it safely 
on its journey through the body. In other words, 

20 



any given natural food contains the elements of 
nutrition and in the exact proportion which it should 
contribute to the processes engaged in its digestion 
and assimilation. 

DOES IT FOLLOW THEN THAT THE SIX- 
TEEN ELEMENTS FOUND IN THE 
HUMAN BODY AND IN ALL EDIBLE 
VEGETABLES MUST APPEAR IN ALL 
SOIL CAPABLE OF SUPPORTING VEG- 
ETABLE LIFE? 

A perfectly balanced soil must contain, chiefly, 
twelve mineral elements. The other four elements 
are obtained from the air and the rain. Where no 
effort is made to restore the elements which have 
been appropriated by plant life and thus removed 
from the soil, stunted growth or crop failure follows 
until man puts back into the soil the elements he 
has taken from it. In order that we may have a 
new supply of phosphorus with which to replace our 
annual drain upon the soil of this one element, the 
government prohibits the exportation of our limited 
supply of phosphate rock. The absence of phos- 
phorus, like the absence of calcium, iron, postas- 
sium or any of the other mineral elements, means 
soil starvation — soil sickness. One little part of 
phosphorus in a thousand parts of earth is all that 
is necessary, but that one little part must be 
present or the mysterious compounder of life will 
not perform its duty. This is true of the other ele- 
ments, each of which contributes in a special man- 
ner to the subtle elaboration of life. 
BUT IF MEN UNDERSTAND THE IMPOR- 
TANCE OF ALL THESE ELEMENTS IN 

21 



THE FOOD OF PLANTS WHY IS IT 
THAT THEY DO NOT RECOGNIZE THE 
IMPORTANCE OF THE SAME ELE- 
MENTS IN THE FOOD OF ANIMALS? 
In a limited manner they do see the analogy and 
act upon it, as in the production of certified-milk 
cows, prize cattle, prize horses, prize hogs and prize 
poultry. The ordinary dairy cow, for instance, re- 
ceives in her food between 15 and 30 lbs. of brewer's 
grain, from which much of the mineral content has 
been leached out in the brewing process, whereas 
the cow fed for vitality and sound milk receives no 
brewer's grain, but, on the contrary, is put on a diet 
of whole grains, corn and oats containing the ele- 
ments which nature put there. 

The ordinary cow also receives on an average 
two quarts of bran, whereas the specially fed cow 
is given as much as eight quarts of bran. The 
brewer's grain contains all the protein, fats and 
carbohydrates that nature put there and which 
dietetics make so much fuss over. In this sense it 
differs in no manner from whole, natural grain. The 
difference is simply a matter of mineral loss and the 
owner of the prize cow recognizes this difference 
and provides against it. 

WHY THEN DOES MAN NOT ADD THESE 

MINERAL SALTS TO HIS OWN DIET IN 

THE FORM OF SPECIALLY PREPARED 

"TABLETS'* OR "DROPS" TO TAKE THE 

PLACE OF THE MISSING ELEMENTS? 

Man does try to do that. You have heard of the 

beef-iron-and-wine tonic, the phosphate tonic, the 

lime-water remedy, the hydrochloric acid and pep- 

22 



sin prescription, etc. The physician, in treating 
anemia, loss of vigor, nervous prostration, etc., 
makes an effort to put back into the starved bodies 
of men and women the elements of which they have 
been systematically robbing themselves by eating 
refined foods. His confessed failure is not his fault. 
He has the correct theory but nature does not assist 
him because that is not nature's way. 
WHY IS THAT NOT NATURE'S WAY? 

As the body's tissues are destroyed by the daily 
wear and tear, they are transformed into simpler 
chemical compounds and are passed out of the body 
as waste-products or useless end-products. In 
order that the living body may replace its broken- 
down cells it must have a constantly renewed 
supply of the elements from which those cells and 
their contents are evolved. 

These elements as we find them in the soil or in 
raw rock can be called inert or non-living matter. 
The chemical processes which transform non-living 
matter into living tissues are the same in plants and 
animals with one exception. 

Plants have the mysterious power of taking the 
non-living matter from the earth and compounding 
it into the wonderfully complex substances which 
form their structure. 

Animals do not possess this power. 

Hence the pharmacist or physician or chemist 
who attempts to replace nature's subtle and marvel- 
ously compounded organic mineral salts with 
laboratory preparations is handicapped from the 
beginning because nature does not recognize his 
feeble and imperfect technique and refuses to change 

23 



or suspend her inexorable laws to suit his purposes. 

Animals are dependent for their existence upon 
foodstuffs prepared from the non-living matter of 
earth by the plants that have the power to prepare 
them. 

Plants obtain the energy which enables them to 
do this mysterious work from the sunlight, and 
only in the presence of sunlight can they carry on 
the up-building, organizing processes which give 
them their tissues. Green grass will not grow in 
the dark. 

The ability to bring about this translation of non- 
living matter into living cells depends on the pres- 
ence of a chemical substance found in the green 
parts, which is called chlorophyl. Of the processes 
by which chlorophyl operates we know nothing 
other than the fact that the friendly rays of the sun 
are necessary to its activity. As nature provides 
man with no capacity to make use of the non-living 
elements of the soil he cannot, like the plant, go for 
his meals to a bed of earth or a stone-pile. The 
plant does that for him and he makes use of the 
plant. This fact explains the folly of attempting 
to feed mankind artificially on "tablets" or "meals 
in miniature," for even though such food might 
contain the elements required by the body in order 
to sustain life, they are not present in a form accept- 
able to the laws of nature and nature spurns them. 
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY THE TERMS 
ENZYMES AND FERMENTS? 

Various parts of the plant and various organs of 
the body contain peculiar substances called enzymes 
and ferments, such as pepsin, trypsin, ptyalin, etc. 

24 



When not destroyed by intense heat or chemical 
preservatives they assist to transform the various 
foods furnished to the animal by the plant into the 
substances that can be absorbed and built up into 
living animal cells or tissues. 

Ordinary baker's yeast is a ferment having the 
power to split-up or transform starch and sugar into 
alcohol, evolving at the same time a waste-product, 
or end-product, in the form of carbonic gas. It is 
the action of this gas which leavens or raises dough 
in the making of bread. Now, if we kill this ferment 
by treating it with an antiseptic or a chemical pre- 
servative such as borax, formaldehyde, benzoate of 
soda, etc., it cannot do its work. The ferments in 
the body are destroyed in the same way by the 
"harmless" preservatives used in the preparation of 
many commercial foodstuffs. This destruction of 
nature's ferments is a pernicious practice, the results 
of which cannot be measured by lawyers in the em- 
ploy of food factories. Such food is dead food. 

It was thought at one time that the ferments 
found in the digestive glands were the only ferments 
to be found in the animal body. In recent years it 
has been discovered that these ferments are of many 
kinds and are intimately concerned in all the mani- 
festations of life. In the liver-cell as many as twelve 
ferments have been found, each performing its own 
peculiar function in the subtle processes of meta- 
bolism. It has also been shown that in the main- 
tenance of life in the higher plants, the organized 
ferments are of profound importance. Through 
their action the higher plants obtain their nitrogen 
from the air in a form which they can utilize and 

25 



subsequently surrender to man for his needs. So, 
even in the presence of all the necessary minerals 
or mineral salts, if these ferments be absent, or en- 
feebled, vegetable or animal life cannot exist 
normally. 

In the animal body some of these ferments, such 
as pepsin, can act to advantage only under an acid 
condition, hence nature takes certain of the mineral 
salts from the foods as a base for the elaboration of 
the acid secretions of the stomach. Other ferments 
act only in an alkaline medium and nature utilizes 
other combinations of the mineral salts in her pro- 
duction of the alkaline saliva, pancreatic juices, etc. 

Fat-splitting ferments act only on fats; diastase 

ferments act only upon starch and sugar ; proteolytic 

ferments act only upon albumens. 

WHAT DO WE KNOW OF THE CHEMICAL 

COMPOSITION OF THESE FERMENTS? 

Little that is definite. We do know that food of 
the wrong kind, food badly prepared, food which 
has suffered a loss of some of its elements by refin- 
ing processes, can set up conditions hostile to the 
action of these ferments and thus invites the inva- 
sion of disease. 

WHAT DO WE KNOW THAT IS DEFINITE 
ABOUT THE FORMATION OF SOME OF 
NATURE'S DIGESTIVE SOLVENTS? 

We know that the body takes from food sodium 
chloride, potassium chloride, phosphate of mag- 
nesium and calcium in generating the alkaline 
pancreatic juice and that therefore the pancreas 
must find a constant fountain of these supplies. 
This it cannot do if they are interfered with in the 

26 



preparation of the food, for how can the body take 
from food elements which have been removed 
from it? 

We know that the body takes from food sodium 
chloride, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, mag- 
nesium phosphate and iron in generating the hydro- 
chloric acid juices of the stomach. By preventing 
the body from finding these elements we establish 
discord. The intricacies of the human laboratory 
excite admiration and amazement. The study of 
these conditions in the schools will inevitably be 
followed by tremendous advances in the welfare of 
the human race. One generation of men, born and 
reared with a knowledge of the laws of nature, will 
produce in the whole race physical and mental vigor 
of a type now produced only under the forces of 
happy accident, when by sheer good-luck this or 
that individual ignorantly observes many of the laws 
which make for good in his growth, development 
and normal sustenance. This is why the country- 
reared boy and girl, fed on the simple, natural 
products of the field and orchard are so often su- 
perior to the city-bred child whose life-processes are 
only too often enfeebled by a diet more or less arti- 
ficial in character. 

IS THE CITY CHILD THEREFORE CON- 
DEMNED TO INFIRMITIES WHICH THE 
COUNTRY CHILD IS LIKELY TO ES- 
CAPE? 
When the city child's food habits are simple and 
natural, and his exercise is what it ought to be, and 
his supply of fresh air is normal, he will enjoy the 
advantages of a larger and fuller life, even though 

27 



the influences of the farm and hillside are never to 
be under-estimated in their beneficial effect upon 
the character of men. 

IS THERE ANY EVERY-DAY PHENOMENON 
WHICH WE MAY OBSERVE AND FROM 
WHICH WE MAY OBTAIN SOME STRIK- 
ING VIEW OF NATURE'S PROFOUND 
OPERATIONS? 

Let us look at the nail of our little finger. Notice 
how delicately pink it is. Now pinch it between 
two of the other fingers. The pale pink color is at 
once intensified to a deep red. The change is in- 
stantaneous, but what does it signify? The pale 
pink, hue indicates the general diffusion of the blood 
with countless millions of red corpuscles through 
the flesh under the nail. The pressure gives us a 
redder hue, for we have crowded these little red 
corpuscles into a cramped area, and the increase in 
their number makes them more noticeable. 

Now if we strike the* nail a bruising blow or cut 
through it into the flesh beneath, nature is aroused 
and all her energies are summoned to the injured 
spot to begin the wonderful labor of reconstruction. 

The little red and white corpuscles of the blood 
stream, obedient to the orders of an unseen general, 
leap to their work of repair. 
WHAT HAPPENS? 

Every corpuscle goes like a soldier in the army 
with full instructions, doing its particular work with 
unerring precision. 

The white corpuscles gather around the edges of 
the wound and pounce upon and destroy any invad- 
ing bacteria or germ life that may be on the skin 

28 



near the wound. They are the policemen or pro- 
tectors and stand on guard while their more numer- 
ous brothers, the red corpuscles, engage in the work 
of building new tissue, bridging the rent in the flesh 
and repairing the injury. The Creator endowed the 
corpuscles with apparent intelligence, for in obed- 
ience to some great unknown law these little 
soldiers of life go forth with full instructions as to 
their duty. Each one travels its beaten path with- 
out interfering with the work of its neighbor and 
accomplishes its purpose unless interfered with by 
an enemy from the outside, or unless they have been 
reduced in .number and vitality by food of imperfect 
quality. Remember these corpuscles are the prod- 
ucts of digestion and they come from the food we 
eat. 

WHY DO INTELLECTUAL MEN HOLD 
COOKERY IN SUCH CONTEMPT THAT 
THEY IGNORE IT ALTOGETHER? 
Because they have not learned to properly rever- 
ence the human body nor its majestic laws by a 
study of its functions in disease and health. Once 
we grasp the tragic significance of man's careless- 
ness when he trifles with his foods, or when through 
false pride he commits the whole subject of nutri- 
tion to the haphazard control of the kitchen-drudge 
or to the commercial food factory, we will realize 
the responsibility that rests upon them to whom is 
entrusted the stupendous task of keeping the race 
alive and well. 

BUT ARE WE NOT SO WONDERFULLY 
MADE THAT IT IS NEEDLESS TO GIVE 
MUCH CONSIDERATION TO OUR 

29 



HABITS OF EATING AND DRINKING, 
RELYING INSTEAD UPON OUR NAT- 
URAL RESISTANCE TO DISEASE? 

We must remember that any violation of nature's 
laws, whether they be broken in presumption, in 
ignorance or in wilfulness, results in disease and 
death. In the United States during the year 1910, 
two hundred and thirty-five thousand two hundred 
and sixty-two children under ten years of age died 
from preventable causes because in some manner 
those laws were violated. The ignorance of their 
parents and the evil practices of modern civilization 
brought about these untimely deaths. We cannot 
presume upon our strength nor laugh in the face 
of nature's laws without paying the price. 
WHY CAN WE NOT TRIFLE WITH THESE 
LAWS NOR IGNORE THEM? 

If we look upon the universe as a self-made, self- 
existing system of things, and man as the most 
highly developed member of it, we can then look 
upon him as self-controlled, responsible only to self, 
limited indeed in power by external forces, but 
otherwise absolute master of his own actions. 
Viewed in this light there is no reason why he 
should not exercise complete liberty, if there is no 
being who can claim the right of commanding his 
obedience to any laws. 

But as we recognize that behind the wonderful 
play of Hamlet there must have been a more won- 
derful intelligence capable of conceiving and execut- 
ing that wonderful structure, we can easily believe 
that behind the sublime universe of which man is 

"30 



but an integer, is an intelligence of infinite order, 
God, the Creator. 

He it is, who after founding the material universe 
and furnishing it with life, has imposed upon that 
life the laws by which it is sustained and by the 
violation of which it is destroyed. 

Man is therefore responsible to his Maker for the 
use which he makes of his faculties and his liberty. 
God has placed man under the reign, not only of 
moral law but of physical law as well. The instincts 
of self-preservation and self-development are not 
merely instincts. They are divinely appointed im- 
pulses keeping man to the main course that leads 
to the ends for which he was created. The physical 
law and the moral law are so interwoven with each 
other that they are not to be separated. 

Once man recognizes that his life and its capa- 
bilities are the gift of God bestowed upon him for 
the working out of his destiny, it follows that he 
is not himself to bring his career to a premature 
close. 

Man may not hasten his end by the swift bullet 
nor by the slower but equally certain method of 
small daily doses of poison, nor may he by the still 
slower, but none the less sure, method of wilfully 
ignoring the physical laws of his life. As food is 
the foundation of all life, man must not undermine 
that foundation by his foolish commercial practices 
unless he wilfully desires the whole structure to 
topple over upon him and crush out his life. 
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE KNOWABLE 
SIGNS BY WHICH MAN MAY BE CON- 
VINCED THAT THE FOOD UPON 

31 



WHICH HIS LIFE IS SUSTAINED PER- 
FORMS CERTAIN FIXED FUNCTIONS 
IN HIS LIFE-PROCESSES, ANY INTER- 
FERENCE WITH WHICH IS FOLLOWED 
BY DISASTER? 
Medical science knows no drug which will cure 
anemia or the emaciation due to a disturbance of 
the digestive processes, constipation, diarrhoea, 
Bright's disease, cancer, nervous diseases and tuber- 
culosis. Medical science knows that violation of 
nature's laws is responsible for these morbid con- 
ditions and that the only preventive of them is 
orderly obedience to those laws. 

In the Philippine Islands they have a disease 
known as beri-beri. We have similar diseases in 
the United States but we call them during their 
various stages, inanition, anemia, neurasthenia, 
nervous prostration, paralysis, death. 

Beri-beri journeys quickly from one stage to an- 
other through all these phases. Those who get it 
die the death. 

In the year 1910 Dr. V. G. Heiser, then Director 
of Health of the Philippine Islands, Dr. Fraser of 
Singapore, Dr. Aaron of the Philippine Medical 
School, Dr. Highet of Siam and Dr. DeHaan of 
Java produced evidence to show that beri-beri is 
caused by a diet of polished rice — denatured, demin- 
eralized rice. This rice, which is the kind consumed 
exclusively in the United States, is brushed and 
scoured between wire bristles and grinding stones 
which remove the outer layer of the grain in which 
nature has gathered the phosphorized fats, phos- 
phorized albumens and other mineral constituents 

32 



and ferments of the grain, thereby robbing it, just 
as refined white flour is robbed of the natural vitaliz- 
ing elements which the body demands. 

During January and February 1910 there was a 
severe outbreak of beri-beri among the inmates of 
the Culion Leper Colony which resisted all medical 
treatment. 

About the time of this outbreak some experiments 
were being conducted on chickens, some of which 
were fed on polished or denatured rice and some on 
the natural grain containing all the mineral elements 
which nature put there. 

The birds fed on polished rice died. The others 
thrived. As the results of this experiment seemed 
significant, all polished rice was at once withdrawn 
from the diet of the lepers and the natural brown 
grain substituted in its stead. The sick in the hos- 
pital were fed the rice "polishings," the parts which 
are removed in making the rice white, representing 
the phosphorus compounds and other mineral salts, 
ferments and nitrogenous products of the grains. 

The spread of the disease was promptly arrested 
and complete cures followed. 

After this fact had been demonstrated to the sat- 
isfaction of the physicians, it was again confirmed 
by feeding polished and unpolished rice to two 
groups of railway workers in the Straits Settle- 
ments. 

The group of men who ate the denatured rice 
contracted beri-beri in approximately sixty days, 
and when changed to a diet of the natural grain 
promptly recovered. The group which partook of 
the natural grain remained immune to the disease. 

33 



After a period of sixty days the denatured rice was 
substituted for the natural grain, whereupon the 
second group after about two months' diet on the 
debased product developed beri-beri just as the 
members of the first group had done. 

When the facts were put before the Governor- 
General of the Islands he issued an executive order, 
June 3, 1910, forbidding the use of polished rice 
(demineralized rice) in all government workshops, 
prisons, hospitals and other public institutions. 

On May 23, 1912, Dr. J. Tsuzuki announced the 
treatment of beri-beri in Japan by the administra- 
tion of a solution of antiberiberin, which was pro- 
duced from the alcoholic extract of rice bran. The 
daily treatment consisted of "one injection anti- 
beriberin; six to ten antiberiberin powders; thirty 
to forty-five antiberiberin pills; three to five anti- 
beriberin capsules and eight to twenty-five grammes 
rice bran powder." This quantity is equivalent to 
from one to three ounces of solid and concentrated 
mineral food. 

Sixty-two beri-beri patients were treated under 
this schedule, of whom forty-two recovered entirely, 
the average treatment lasting twenty-three days. 

This treatment consisted of restoring to the min- 
erally-starved bodies of the sick just those vitalizing 
mineral elements which had been withdrawn from 
their diet by polishing their rice, thereby removing 
from that rice those essential but frequently despised 
elements which the Creator put there. Those who 
see the evil consequences of debasing rice by the 
whitening process to satisfy the demand for pleas- 
ing color, can judge what results follow the debas- 

34 



ing or refining of wheat by a process that robs it 
of the same organic compounds of phosphorus, iron, 
etc., in the same way. 

APART FROM THE FACTS CITED ABOVE 
DO PHYSIOLOGISTS RECOGNIZE THAT 
THE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS OF PHOS- 
PHORUS ARE ABSOLUTELY NECES- 
SARY TO THE HEALTH AND WELL- 
BEING OF MAN? 
Yes. Recognizing that man does not possess the 
power of the plant to manufacture its needed organic 
compounds of phosphorus from inorganic or non- 
living, phosphorus, Dr. Alexander Bryce of Birming- 
ham, England, goes so far as to declare that "it is 
even probable that a daily supply of the different 
compounds of organic phosphorus is necessary in 
the food, as no proof exists to show that nucleins, 
lecithins, phosphatides or phytins are capable of 
being subtituted one for the other." 

To remove more than seventy-five per cent of all 
the organic phosphorus compounds of our grains 
before baking our millions of loaves of white bread, 
our millions of pounds of rolls, cakes, crackers, bis- 
cuits, doughnuts, etc., is to set aside all considera- 
tions of health and vitality, and all regard for 
nature's laws, in the idle pursuit of a pernicious 
custom which is slowly but surely making us a na- 
tion of physical bankrupts. 

We know that beri-beri owes its origin to a 
deficiency of the organic compounds of phosphorus 
and the other mineral salts among rice-eating peo- 
ple, and that rice-eating people not only do not con- 
tract the disease when they live on rice as nature 

35 



produces it, but that even when they have developed 
the disease by eating "refined" rice they can recover 
their health by going back to the natural rice grain. 

In America we are not a rice-eating people but 
we are a bread-eating people and a denatured grain- 
eating people, and while beri-beri is not a disease 
common to this country, due to the fact that our 
diet is not composed exclusively of rice or bread, 
yet in America polished rice and refined wheat flour 
are used very extensively by many classes, particu- 
larly the poor and the children of the poor. 

The average well-fed business man, whose diet is 
generously varied, will probably obtain from the 
variety of his food sufficient of the elements neces- 
sary to sustain life in a more or less normal con- 
dition. But for the school children we have another 
story to tell. Then later, the hastily prepared 
luncheon, the denatured foundation of most hotel 
and restaurant meals, and the unfitness of the com- 
mercial baker's products continue the degenerative 
work that commenced with infancy. 

In addition we also debase, in like fashion, barley 
in pearling it and corn meal in degerminating it. 

ARE OUR CHILDREN SUFFERING TO ANY 
CONSIDERABLE DEGREE FROM SUCH 
VIOLATIONS OF NATURE'S LAWS? 

We have seen that in the year 1910, 235,262 
children under 10 years of age died in the United 
States. These figures were prepared by the Census 
Director of Mortality Statistics at Washington, 
D. C. In the year 1912, Dr. Thomas D. Wood of 
the Teachers' College, in a bulletin issued by the 

36 



United States Bureau of Education commented 
upon the physical defects of school children. 

Dr. Wood stated that in the United States today 
400,000 of the school children have organic heart 
disease. 
1,000,000 have tuberculosis in some form. 
1,000,000 have spinal curvature. 
1,000,000 have defective hearing. 
5,000,000 are suffering from mal-nutrition. 
6,000,000 have enlarged tonsils, adenoids or en- 
larged cervical glands. 
10,000,000, or as high a$ 98% in some schools, have 

defective teeth. 
15,000,000 need attention for physical defects which 
are prejudicial to health and which are 
partially or completely remediable. 
IN BROODING OVER THE ABOVE FIGURES 
SHOULD WE CONSIDER REFORM 
MOVEMENTS OTHER THAN THE 
"MAINTENANCE OF SANITARY, 
HEALTHFUL SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT, 
WITH CLEAN SCHOOL HOUSES, 
ABUNDANT LIGHT AND GOOD AIR;" 
"RATIONAL SUPERVISION AND DIREC- 
TION OF PLAY, GAMES, ATHLETICS 
AND ALL HEALTHFUL AND SATISFY- 
ING FORMS OF PHYSICAL EDUCA- 
TION;" "HYGIENIC INSTRUCTION AND 
SCHOOL MANAGEMENT, WITH PAR- 
TICULAR ATTENTION TO INFLUENCE 
OF TEACHER UPON NERVOUS 
HEALTH OF PUPILS?" 
The first part of this question is answered by 

37 



showing that proper nutrition demands the correc- 
tion of the food-supply, and to answer the second 
question we must ask two other questions: 
WHAT IS NERVOUS HEALTH? WHAT IS 
NERVOUS DISEASE? 

If we assert that a certain disease is "nervous" 
do we mean that the nerves are diseased and there- 
fore are influencing the body to a state of ill health 
or that a sick body has so affected the nerves that 
the latter react upon the disordered body? 

The physician who administers "nervines" admin- 
isters agents of unknown constitution to patients 
whose constitution is likewise unknown. He treats 
the nerves, but the nerves have been affected by 
wrong food or drink, or by unnecessary drugs, and 
it is the whole physical system that needs treat- 
ment. 

It is true in a sense that all activity of the body is 
controlled by the nervous system, and therefore 
there is some foundation for ascribing disease to the 
failure of the nervous system. But why does the 
nervous system fail? Nervous diseases are on the 
increase and apart from the influence of coffee, tea, 
tobacco, morphine, cocaine, alcohol, syphilis, etc., 
what causes that increase? 

An excitable person with faulty digestion is said 
to suffer from nervous dyspepsia and the nerves 
are blamed for the dyspepsia and treated accord- 
ingly. Are the nerves acting abnormally because of 
the dyspepsia or is the dyspepsia acting on the 
nerves? Which is the offender? 

The nerves, like all other living tissues, are sub- 
ject to the laws of nutrition. They have to be fed, 

38 



repaired, kept in trim. The vascular channels carry 
their nourishing elements to the nerves and the 
blood of the body is the medium from which the 
nerves and tissues derive their nourishment. Blood 
is the end-product of digestion as we have seen. 
Now if the food is poor, does the heart possess some 
special discriminating function whereby it is able 
to choose for the nerves alone any good elements 
that the poor food happens to possess? 

If the food does not contain the elements neces- 
sary to normal digestion how can digestion remain 
normal? How can abnormal digestion produce 
good end-products? How can the bad end-products 
of bad digestion produce good blood? How can 
bad blood impart proper nourishment to the nerves? 
How can badly nourished nerves preserve their 
vitality? 

Nervous health is not an end-product of bad food 
and nervous disease is not an end-product of good 
food. The public schools must initiate food reform 
if they are to have anything to say concerning the 
influence of the teacher upon the nervous health of 
the pupil. 

Schaumann has shown that polished rice which 
produces tropical beri-beri, or even the ship variety 
of beri-beri which arises in the European crews of 
sailing vessels forced to live on food largely de- 
prived of its organic phosphorus, will also produce 
polyneuritis in fowls. Schaumann proved that bar- 
ley and white flour can induce the same disease. 
The writer can prove that ordinary corn meal (de- 
germinated behind the screens) can bring about the 
same results. 

39 



Schaumann also showed that by demineralizing 
foodstuffs of any kind through the action of solvents 
or by disorganizing those organic mineral sub- 
stances by high temperature the same disease can 
be induced. It has also been shown that foods rich 
in the organic compounds of phosphorus such as 
peas, beans, wheat bran and middlings, barley-pol- 
ishings, rice-polishings, g^ain germs, etc., when 
added to the demineralized or defective foodstuffs 
will prevent the development of the disease or can 
cure it when present. 

Beri-beri is the extreme or last stage of mineral 
starvation. 

APART FROM THE UNOFFICIAL EXPERI- 
MENTS OF INDIVIDUALS AND THE OB- 
SERVATIONS OF MEN INTERESTED IN 
DIET-REFORM, HAVE ANY OFFICIAL 
OR NOTEWORTHY EXPERIMENTS 
ALONG THESE LINES BEEN RECORDED 
IN RECENT YEARS IN ENGLAND OR 
AMERICA? 
Yes. The following are some of the details of the 
research work carried on during the years 1911 and 
1912 with whole wheat and refined white bread in 
the Bio-Chemical Department of the Liverpool 
School of Tropical Medicine by Professor Benjamin 
Moore and his aids: 

"Groups of pigeons have been fed on fine white 
bread made from white flour guaranteed to be 
unbleached and unadulterated, while similar 
groups of pigeons have been given an ordinary 
quality of whole wheat bread. The white-bread 
pigeons all speedily developed marked symptoms 

40 



of ill-nutrition and serious nerve derangement. 
Besides losing weight they sat listless and shiver- 
ing, lost power in their legs, suggesting nerve 
paralysis and many developed convulsions. 

"The whole wheat pigeons, on the other hand, 
kept healthy and up to normal weight. 

"In another series of experiments, pigeons 
which had developed grave nervous symptoms on 
a white bread diet recovered completely, when 
after a week of special nursing they were placed 
on an exclusive whole wheat bread diet during 
their convalescence. 

"All the recent work done in our bio-chemical 
laboratories proves beyond question that in all 
cereals, such as wheat, barley, oats and rice, 
there are important substances incorporated in 
the inner layer of the husk which are essential to 
the nutritive value of the grain. If these elements 
are eliminated in the milling or preparation of the 
grain, a diet largely composed of cereals or bread 
thus denatured (corn-flakes, breakfast-foods, 
farina, biscuits, soda-crackers, cakes, etc.), will not 
only fail adequately to nourish the body but will 
tend to set up actual disease by lowering resist- 
ance to a point where disease-breeding bacteria 
can gain control. 

"Our nerves as a nation are much less stable 
than in the days prior to a white bread diet. All 
our work suggests that the growing tendency of 
the age to neurasthenia, 'nerves,' is not unlikely 
due to removing from our diet those very ele- 
ments of cereal foods which nature has hid in the 

41 



husk of the grain and which man in his ignorance 
discards. 

"Certain of the diseases of mal-nutrition among 
children, notably rickets, scurvy-rickets, tetanus 
and convulsions, present symptoms very similar 
to those we note in our white-bread pigeons. So 
striking is this similarity that physicians who 
have followed up our work are already treating 
certain of their scurvy-ricket patients with a diet 
of whole wheat bread." 

Dr. Frederick Gowland Hopkins, University of 
Cambridge, conducted a series of experiments along 
the same lines and, after definitely proving that 
young animals grow with very much greater rapid- 
ity on whole wheat flour than on white flour, was 
able to improve the tissue-building rate of the white- 
flour subjects by adding to their white flour an ex- 
tract made from the brown flour, thereby ascertain- 
ing that to make the best use of any food material, 
such as the proteins, etc., a variety of the organic 
mineral compounds must be present in definite pro- 
portions. His experiments were peculiarly like those 
which we have noted with regard to antiberiberin 
extract made from rice bran. 

Doctor E. S. Eddie and Dr. G. C. Simpson, of the 
research staff, University of Liverpool, reporting on 
similar experiments, declared: 

"It has been proved by Braddon and other 
workers in the East that exclusive use of polished 
rice as a diet leads to a form of peripheral neuritis. 
This disease does not occur in those native races 
who use whole rice as a diet. Our own experi- 
ments have been extended to similar work in 



relation to the stripping of the outer case from the 
wheat berry so as to produce a white bread instead 
of a whole wheat or standard loaf, and we find 
that parallel results are often obtained when the 
outer layers are excluded from the diet with both 
wheat and rice. These experiments clearly 
demonstrate that the outer part of the grain con- 
tains the essential constituents for the nutrition 
of the nervous system, both in growing animals 
and in adults." 
HOW CAN TEACHERS INFLUENCE THE 
NERVOUS HEALTH OF THEIR PUPILS 
IF THOSE PUPILS COME TO SCHOOL 
ON A DENATURED BREAKFAST AND 
GO HOME TO A DENATURED DINNER? 
Not so much by moral processes as by the physic- 
al means of teaching them how to correct their diet 
in conformity with the laws of nature, disobedience 
to which is really immoral. 

BUT WHEN WE CONSIDER THE FACT 
THAT WE EAT A GREAT MANY STEAKS 
AND CHOPS, DO WE NOT SUPPLY IN 
THESE FLESH FOODS THOSE ELE- 
MENTS WHICH THE CEREAL MANU- 
FACTURER AND BREAD MAKER TAKE 
FROM US, THEREBY BALANCING OUR 
DIET? 
The direct answer to this question is, No. But 
there are many indirect answers. 

If you adopted the habits of meat-eating animals, 
lions, tigers, vultures, etc., and ate the blood of the 
animal as well as its bones and flesh, you would find 
all the elements of life which the flesh and blood 

43 



and bones contain, all the phosphates and oxides, all 
the calcium and iron, all the nitrates and sulphates 
of the animal's organism; but when you kill your 
meat-producing animals, you hang them up and 
drain them of their blood and strip them of their 
bones, saving nothing but the flesh with its mini- 
mum content of phosphorus and potassium. It is 
easy to bring about a condition in young dogs, re- 
sembling "rickets" in children, by feeding them on 
meat and fat alone. If you add pulverized bone or 
calcium carbonate or calcium acetate to their meat 
and fat, the animals partially recover. 

Flesh which is minced and immersed for a few 
hours in cold, distilled water loses its phosphorus 
and potassium salts and its color. If cooked in this 
condition it will be tasteless. If offered to dogs and 
cats they will eat a little then refuse to take more 
until driven to do so by hunger. If fed on nothing 
else they will die quicker than animals not fed at all, 
for, in addition to being deprived of substances that 
will sustain life, the animals fed on demineralized 
meat are obliged to dissipate their reserve vitality 
at a rapid rate through the effort of their organs to 
throw off the useless food imposed upon them, 
whereas the animal that is being starved outright 
does not expend its strength faster than the laws of 
starvation demand. 

WOULD NOT THIS TEND TO REDUCE 
THE CONSUMPTION OF MEAT? 

We must not lose sight of the fact that America 
has introduced meat-eating to the world on a larger 
scale than was ever known before. The early 
settlers found meat absolutely free in America. All 

44 



they had to do was to go to the woods and shoot. 
Bison, bear, moose, squirrel, rabbit, deer, grouse, 
quail, duck, turkey were to be found in every clump 
of trees. In the old country men had so little meat 
that they sang songs of ecstacy when at Christmas 
time a boar's head or a roast joint was brought to 
the table. Meat in America everywhere and at 
every meal, easy to obtain, easy to prepare — no 
wonder the meat habit became fixed when the meat- 
hungry European became a companion of* the wild 
animals of the American mountain and plain. 

A deer was shot ; its loin was frizzled over a wood 
fire and the remainder of the carcass was left to rot. 
Men were not worried over the food question. Food 
was free. But settlers came in greater numbers and 
as they grew thicker wild meat grew scarcer. Men 
were building cities, framing a constitution, plan- 
ning for a money supply, but no one thought of the 
food question. Food was still comparatively free, 
even though it did not stalk up to the front of the 
settler's hut to be shot as in the earlier days. Graz- 
ing lands were transformed into agricultural tracts. 
Where cattle once fed, onions, tobacco, cotton and 
corn were planted. Towns and farms grew in num- 
ber, not so the crop of cattle. The product of the corn 
fields v/as gradually turned into glucose, whiskey, 
corn starch, cattle food and breakfast-food — but the 
breakfast-food contained only part of the corn, the 
least valuable part. The steer ate the cream of the 
grain — and man drank the alcohol, ate the corn 
syrup, the corn flakes and the fattened steaks. The 
crowds continued to come and to-day there are a 
million more mouths to feed than there were six 

45 



months ago, but there is not more meat to eat and 
the robbery of the wheat and rice and corn goes on. 
Let us not forget that when America began meat 
was free, but the day is near at hand when meat 
once a week will be the rule, and after that it is 
inevitable, with our increasing millions, that cheap 
meat will be a memory and meat-at-all a luxury. 

Our children of to-day, as the men of to-morrow, 
should learn the truth, and learn the way of escape 
from starvation, and the high cost of living. 

The American workman will come to the condi- 
tion of the common people of Europe who ate meat 
only at Christmas time. If the government does not 
plan to give him a plentiful supply of honest food 
free from the abuses and debasements of our 
avaricious commercialism of to-day, we will have 
the same scourge of famine and disease with which 
the older peoples of the world are cursed. No, meat 
does not balance a denatured diet and it never will ! 
Even so, it is better as it is and will be better still 
when meat is only a name, if we face the issue and 
reform the food we have. Already the children of 
America are paying the price of their fathers' ig- 
norance and indifference. Already the processes of 
degeneracy are at work in a land of supposed 
plenty ! 

Despite the establishment of this fact, tremendous 
and terrible in its significance, we carelessly destroy 
the organic mineral compounds for which physician 
and surgeon even at the uttermost extremity of 
death can find no adequate substitute in nature. 
Science has penetrated into the secrets of nature, 
she has multiplied man's power by arms of iron and 

46 



nerves of steel, she has won conquest for him over 
the seas and the air, but she has not taught him 
obedience to nature's laws nor has she shown the 
plain people how to eat their daily bread. 

Springtime is the season of high spirits in nature. 
Man alone in the spring complains of lassitude. All 
round him he witnesses the miracle of rising sap, 
the quickening strength that swells the bud, the 
energy that forces the spear of grass up through the 
hard clod. Man needs his "tonic," or thinks he 
does, because unlike nature he does not heed the 
laws of life but sets up standards of his own. Un- 
happily his standards are at war with heaven and 
so he pays the price in death. 

IS THE DEVITALIZING OF OUR GRAINS 
THE ONLY FOOD-CAUSE OF THE PHYS- 
ICAL DEFECTS OF 15,000,000 OF OUR 
AMERICAN SCHOOL-CHILDREN? 

No, although it is the biggest single factor in the 
degeneracy of this nation, it is not alone. The 
sugar-bowl and the candy-kitchen loom large in the 
background. Their insidious work is baffling the 
skill of our physicians and surgeons to a degree 
which we cannot understand until we have asked 
the question, what is sugar as it is manufactured 
today ? 

The answer to that question stumbles over 
another broken law of nature and still another, and 
again we see man in his commercial skill defiant of 
the ruin which his greed is piling up around him. 

The sugar cane is a good gift of nature and its 
unrefined product, cane-sugar, is a valuable and a 
natural food just as undefined honey and unrefined 

47 



maple sugar are valuable natural foods. But man 
spurns the juice of the sugar cane and will have 
none of its fine-flavored, rich brown crystals con- 
taining the beneficent tissue salts which the plant 
has elaborated for his benefit. In the case of the 
maple tree he is inconsistently content to consume 
its nut-brown sugar just as it leaves the kettle 
whereas he asks that the sugar of the cane be de- 
mineralized and refined until its color is reduced to 
an artificial pallor. 

We will examine the conduct of that mineral- 
hungry sugar a little later. Its companion, 
molasses, bleached and preserved with sulphurous 
acid, every barrel of it as manufactured in the 
United States, has a slightly different charge to 
meet, but its first cousin, glucose, is included in the 
same indictment. Millions of pounds of life-giving 
corn are destroyed and consumed annually in the 
manufacture of syrup which is simply an artificial, 
mineral-free conversion of the starch of the corn by 
the hydrolizing action of muriatic or hydrochloric 
acid into the sweet, with which our children spread 
their minerally-robbed bread, and which the candy 
maker employs by hundreds of thousands of bar- 
rels in the preparation of his thousands of tons of 
mineral-free bonbons, chocolates, caramels, sticks, 
balls, beans, pellets, etc. 

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SAYING THAT 
REFINED CANE SUGAR AND GLUCOSE 
ARE MINERAL-FREE? 
The chemical processes by which they are manu- 
factured destroy or remove the organic mineral 
compounds organized for man's needs by nature in 

48 



the sugar cane and in the grain of corn. Man by 
laying his ruthless hands upon those natural prod- 
ucts defeats the ends of nature and produces 
instead an artificial shadow of the substance, 
foolishly believing that by so doing he is contribu- 
ting to the welfare of his fellows. 
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SAYING THAT 
REFINED CANE SUGAR AND GLUCOSE 
SYRUP ARE MINERAL-HUNGRY? 

The answer to this question is most serious. If 
we kill a frog and place its pulsating heart on a slab 
of marble the frog's heart will continue to beat for 
some time. It will of course eventually collapse and 
become flabby and lifeless. In order to prolong its 
pulsations for an hour or more we need only provide 
it with a solution of lime (calcium), (KC1 or NaCl 
of proper strength produces the same effect), one of 
the sixteen simple elements of which we are com- 
posed. Under the mysterious influence of this com- 
monest of earths the cold marble slab will witness 
in that dead heart for hours the manifestations of 
life. 

BUT WHAT HAS LIME TO DO WITH DE- 
NATURED SUGAR? 

Without the assistance of lime the digestive fer- 
ments refuse to perform their complex functions. 

Rennet is a ferment. It is employed in making 
curd from milk, the first step in making ordinary 
cheese. In order to help the rennet do its work, the 
lime in the milk must be made soluble and kept sol- 
uble and, in order to accomplish this, the cheese 
maker employs hydrochloric acid or some similar 
solvent of calcium. 

49 



If the lime were not present in a soluble form the 
curd would never become cheese. This is proved by 
adding a little oxalic acid to the milk or by decom- 
posing or precipitating the lime by boiling. 

The oxalic acid throws the lime out of solution 
thereby depriving the rennet of its aid, thereby in- 
hibiting the processes of fermentation, thereby pre- 
venting the making of the cheese. Lime is a 
mysterious worker but an active one. 

If you cut your finger the blood coagulates at the 
wound and you do not bleed to death, because of the 
activity of the soluble lime that is present in the 
blood. It is not difficult to understand that we 
should permit no condition of nutrition which has 
the power to interfere with the presence of our 
blood's normal content of lime. We are getting 
nearer to the answer to the question, What is 
mineral-hungry sugar? 

Let us look at the records that tell us of 10,000,- 
000 school children with defective teeth. Those 
defective teeth are only the surface symptoms of 
much deeper ravages. The dentist prescribes tooth 
washes and tooth pastes, advocates oral hygiene, 
fills cavities and fits bridges, ignoring the fact that 
the great cause of tooth destruction is to be found 
on the one hand in lime and phosphorus starvation 
and on the other in food (mineral-hungry sugar) 
that has the power to steal lime from the body! 

Some dentists say that this candy and sugar- 
eating nation loses its teeth because the excess 
sugar that it takes into its mouth acts directly and 
destroyingly on the surface enamel. They close 
their eyes to the fact that destruction starts in the 

50 



pulp of the teeth, beneath the crust of enamel. The 
vital processes of the body cannot carry on their 
work without lime. Where there is a deficiency of 
lime salts in the food the body actually tears down 
its own structure in order to obtain this necessary 
mineral. It burrows into the only available source 
of lime supply, the lime of the teeth and bones. In 
the teeth this lime is gradually consumed until it 
leaves only a shell-like arch over the weakened spot. 
Here the enamel sooner or later cracks and crum- 
bles under pressure and an avenue is opened up for 
the entrance of bacteria from without to complete 
the ruin. The damage had been done before there 
was any surface evidence of it. 

Sugar and fruit acids have no effect on sound 
teeth. Such teeth can be immersed in solutions of 
fruit acids and sugars for months and suffer no 
erosion. 

Sugar (mineral-free and mineral-hungry) has a 
remarkable affinity for lime, just as much as iron 
has for oxygen. 

When we consume an excess of lime-free sugar, 
the sugar with insatiable thirst attacks the soluble 
lime of the tissues and blood and uniting with it 
carries it off. The blood and tissues retaliate by 
sapping the bones and teeth, for in order to live and 
work they must have lime. The druggist appre- 
ciates the remarkable affinity between sugar and 
lime and makes use of it in preparing his simple 
syrup of lime. One thousand parts of distilled 
(mineral-hungry) water will take up one part of 
lime. The addition of sugar to the water increases 
its lime drinking capacity 3,500 per cent. 

51 



The babe in its mother's womb is a lime con- 
sumer. If the mother's food is robbed of the lime 
that belongs to it, and if she is a sugar consumer, 
both mother and babe pay the price but the mother 
pays it first. The wounds of a sugar consumer bleed 
profusely and heel with difficulty. Profuse bleeding 
is characteristic of tissues fed by blood deficient in 
soluble lime. 

If we are indifferent to the physical rights of 
motherhood and childhood, if we care nothing for 
her whose instrumentality in carrying on the work 
of God's creation is divinely appointed, if we are 
more deeply interested in the unnatural titillations 
of the palate and the artificial demands of the eye 
for pale color, then let us go on in our commercial 
crimes of robbing the grains and refining the sugars, 
and demineralizing both. The demineralized sugar 
has just as much affinity for iron as it has for lime 
and the candy eater, as candy is now made, robs 
his body of its iron in the same way. 

The candy-maker dare not cook sugar in an iron 
kettle because the sugar will actually unite with the 
iron and carry it off, thereby destroying the kettle. 
We ignore its destructive action on the body but 
save the pots and pans. Sugar and glucose differ in 
this : sugar does not kill bees or mice ; glucose does. 
Glucose is not consumed as a sweet, it has to be 
sweetened with sugar or Sachaarin. It is used as a 
filler because it is cheap. The mineral salts taken 
from the corn in making glucose are taken from man 
and given to cattle, because cattle fed on the by- 
products of the glucose industry, die if the mineral 
salts are not mixed with that by-product. 

52 



CAN WE TEACH THESE THINGS TO CHIL- 
DREN IN THE SCHOOLS? 

Yes, we can feed chickens on a lime-free diet and 
note the results. We can feed dogs on meat, with- 
out bones, and note their tettered skin, their loss of 
hair, their ugly disposition, their shortness of life. 
We can feed caged mice on refined corn meal, or 
white bread, or polished rice, and distilled water 
(lime-free) and note their "nerves," then their par- 
oxysms, then their convulsions. We can study the 
culture of pneumonia germs which reaching a sta- 
tionary growth are revived with lime. We can 
study the twitching of the muscle that is deprived 
of lime and we can remember that lime is only one 
of the organized minerals without all of which in 
proper proportion life and health are failures. 

The coal-tar color schemes and the ethers com- 
monly employed in candy-making, soda water, soft 
drinks and commercial baking, butyric ether, oen- 
anthic ether, formic ether, benzoic ether, valerianate 
ether, amyl ether, ethyl ether, acetic ether, etc., with 
the anti-ferments or ferment-destroyers employed in 
the making of condiments, sauces, jellies, jams, 
mince-meats, beverages, etc., are not substitutes for 
the life-making, life-sustaining, natural food ele- 
ments which modern food-folly removes from our 
national food supply, even though the commercial 
food factory employs experts to declare them 
"harmless." Food should be a human conserver not 
a human destroyer. 

ARE SWEETS THEN ESSENTIALLY INJUR- 
IOUS TO THE HEALTH OF THE 
HUMAN FAMILY? 

53 



By no means. They are on the contrary quite 
necessary to the human family and are found in all 
nature in a natural state. 

Most vegetables are rich in natural sugar or in 
sugar forming elements which by the action of the 
digestive organs are converted into sugar. The 
child should not be fed with artificial sugar for the 
reason that it makes its own natural sugar. All the 
starch consumed by a human being must be 
changed into sugar before digestion can be com- 
pleted. 

DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE ONLY SUGAR 
WE SHOULD CONSUME IS THE SUGAR 
FOUND IN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES 
SUCH AS THE GRAPE, PEAR, PEACH, 
DATE, FIG, BEET, CARROT, ETC.? 
No, it means nothing of the kind. 
From the earliest recorded period of man's exist- 
ence on this planet he has been a consumer of added 
natural sugar just as he has been a consumer of 
added water. His vegetables and fruits contain the 
quantity of water which they should contain but 
according to the variation of his conduct, exercise 
or habits his need for more water increases. In 
somewhat similar manner added natural sugar 
becomes valuable to his diet. The patriarch Jacob 
sent a present of honey to propitiate the dreaded 
prime minister of Egypt of whom he would buy 
wheat. The Greeks made bread and cakes with 
flour and honey. Pythagoras who died at the age of 
90 lived on bread and honey and recommended such 
diet to his disciples. Besides the honey of the bees, 
the production and culture of which should be en- 

54 



couraged on a vast national scale, the ancients 
recognized "reed-honey" or cane sugar. Theo- 
phrastus spoke of it as such and Dioscorides called 
it "honey of reeds." 

In the East Indies, Arabia and China the sugar 
cane, "a certain reed filled with a kind of honey," 
was cultivated for centuries before the dawn of the 
Christian era. It was not until the 15th century that 
any attempt was made to "refine" "the honey of 
reeds," when a Venetian discovered a method of 
whitening the brown syrup and reducing it to loaf 
form. Honey, the unrefined honey of reeds or cane 
syrup, the unrefined sugar of the cane, and the 
syrup and sugar of the maple tree are natural 
sweets, affording for preserving purposes, baking, 
candy-making and all other culinary purposes, a 
trinity of flavors which modern civilization has al- 
most forgotten, flavors so superior to the flavor of 
the denatured granulated sugar of the grocery store 
that they might be called the lost sweets of 
paradise. 

ALL THIS REALLY ADVOCATES THE USE 
OF IMPURE SUGAR, DOES IT NOT? 

If sugar, containing the salts of the cane that 
nature put into the juice of the cane, can be called 
impure (?) sugar it advocates that kind of sugar. 

Starch in nature is always combined or associ- 
ated with other elements. Sugar, too, in roots, 
fruits, reeds, trees, is combined in the same way 
with other elements. 

This is as it should be and we should allow no 
man to take anything out of our foods that nature 
put there. 



Chemically pure sugar, &2 H= 2 On, is a product of 
the laboratory, not of God. 

If you have never had a hint of the delicacy of 
these things beat two eggs, add them to a quart of 
certified milk, add to this mixture a half pint of 
strained honey or the same quantity of pure sap- 
syrup from the maple tree and freeze as you would 
freeze ice-cream. A cake can be mixed with whole 
wheat meal, eggs, butter, honey or pure maple 
syrup, sufficient water or milk to make a batter, with 
cream of tartar and bi-carbonate of soda for raising, 
which will start you on a career of restoring to the 
diet of your household the flour and sugar mixtures 
as they ought to be and as nature asks you to have 
them. You cannot procure old-fashioned pure 
brown sugar now-a-days but when enlightened 
people decide in sufficient numbers to want it, the 
perverted cane sugar industry of modern times will 
return to you the inheritance which you have sur- 
rendered in exchange for the pallor of death in your 
sugar-bowl. Old-fashioned open kettle molasses, 
now a thing of the past, must be restored. It was 
an honest food, rich in the tissue salts of the cane 
and possessing a most delicious flavor. The miser- 
able molasses of to-day, treated with DEADLY sul- 
phurous acid, must be destroyed. Our children 
demand its destruction and the only thing that 
stands between them and their rights is the old 
stock argument of every evil industry, "Menace us 
and you throw hundreds of men out of work." 

Why keep men at work when the fruits of their 
toil degenerate their children? Sulphurous acid 
must go. It plays a bad role in the tragedy of food 

5G 



frauds, acting as an agent that prevents oxidization 
in fruits and sugars, thereby bleaching them to a 
lighter color. It retards oxidization in the body in 
the same manner and destroys the blood corpus- 
cles in its evil work. 

WHAT THEN IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS 
SERIES OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS? 
The reform of man's food by conserving the sol- 
ubles of that food, by conserving its ferments and 
its organic compounds. 

HOW IS THIS REFORM TO BE BROUGHT 
ABOUT? 

By a vast scheme of education which will teach 
the rising generation the meaning of food in its 
relationship to life, beginning with the most com- 
monplace of all foods, the cereals and sugars, until 
the dangers of denaturing, chemically preserving, 
chemically bleaching and chemically coloring foods 
are fully understood. 

Nature gives man an appetite. 

Nature supplies food for that appetite. 

Man by artifice and caprice wantonly changes the 
character of nature's food, thereby establishing 
conditions hostile to nature's processes. 

These unnatural conditions bring about misery, 
disease and untimely death. Tuberculosis follows 
low resistance ; let that be remembered. To prevent 
the unnecessary sorrow and pain that follow man's 
sins against nature in relation to eating and drink- 
ing, our national food supply must be reformed. 



57 



is a forerunner or herald for "Starving 
America" by Alfred W. McCann. 

It is designed for wide distribution and 
may be used as a text-book in domes- 
tic science department of schools. 

It has been adopted in the State Nor- 
mal Schools of Massachusetts. 

"Starving America" gives full details 
of important matters covered only by a 
question and answer in this book. And 
it covers many other subjects in its 
272 pages. 

"Starving America" 
by Alfred W. McCann. Price $1.50. 



"Vital Questions and Answers" 
Price 50 cents — three copies for $1.00. 



"How to live on $750 to $1500 a year." 
Full details of how twenty-five families 
overcame the high living cost. Price 
$1.00, postage 8c. 



F. M. BARTON, PUBLISHER 

Caxton Building 
Cleveland, Ohio 



JUN 21 1913 



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014 336 716 2 * 



